Foreword
by Dianne Bondy
I started practicing yoga when I was very young. My mom found
Be Young with Yoga by Richard L. Hittleman at a used book sale in 1967 and decided to try it. When she introduced me to the practice, it felt natural and fun. Throughout my life, yoga has helped me navigate the world as a black woman in a plus-sized body. The world has always been interested in my physical appearance, and I have never measured up to popular culture’s standards. My yoga practice changed how I saw myself in the world and showed me how I could influence consciousness on a much larger scale.
As yoga became increasingly popular in the West, this ancient and powerful eight-limbed practice was reduced to the physical postures. It idealized practitioners who aligned with the Western beauty ideal: white, able-bodied, conventionally attractive, and thin. There seemed to be no place for people of color, elders, the less affluent, disabled bodies, or people in larger bodies. Yoga had become an exclusive club. This was very different from the yoga practice I loved, which focused on creating connection, contentment, harmony, and inclusiveness in the world.
Simultaneously, yoga’s guru principle—a traditional system where a master teacher is the sole authority for a specific yoga lineage—resulted in many abuses of power. Disguised as surrendering to the practice of yoga, practitioners were encouraged to surrender their autonomy and agency to the guru. People were harmed across many lineages and styles of yoga. These situations gave rise to a shift in how we share, teach, and experience yoga: the power of yoga resides within the student and not the teacher.
As modern yoga culture continues to grow, it is adapting to include our evolving ideas around agency, consent, accessibility, inclusion, and adaptability. We are moving away from the idea that there is one way to practice yoga. To paraphrase one of my favorite modern yogis, Colin Hall, yoga teacher and professor of religious studies at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, “It is the very nature of humanity to adapt, so one can argue yoga’s evolution to an accessible, adaptable practice is what is traditional.”
We must be clear about our intentions for practicing. Yoga needs to be more about how we show up in the world and create equity, equality, accessibility, and justice for all bodies and less about beautifully curated pictures on social media. This practice of yoga needs to be about all of us regardless of our size, shape, age, ability, color, or gender identity. Representation matters in yoga as much as it does in other areas of our lives.
Throughout this book you will be guided by Kino’s masterful understanding of Ashtanga yoga along with my interpretation of the practice for larger and nonconforming bodies.
You will be encouraged to exercise your own sense of agency and autonomy within the practice.
Get Your Yoga On will give you the tools to decide how you want to customize your practice to represent the individual needs of your body. We encourage you to explore your body as a vessel for joy, movement, and enlightenment.
Yoga changed my life. It taught me how to be kind, empathic, compassionate, and content. It also taught me how to be powerful, discerning, and inclusive in my words, actions, and view of the world. Yoga cracked my heart wide open. It can do the same for you. Yoga can be your gateway to a better understanding of your body and your world.
Copyright © 2020 by Kino MacGregor. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
